Devonshire Oct to Dec 17

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How this came about is related by the late John Whitham in his book Ottery St. Mary, a Devonshire Town, who recounts an episode in the life of Francis George Coleridge (1794-1854) who practised as a solicitor in the town, as did John Whitham. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, who addressed his great unfinished poem 'The Recluse' to Coleridge, “who inspired the work” He left Christ’s when he was 17 and went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, studied hard and wrote Greek poetry “like a mad dog” - which won him a prize - but he never took a degree and after walking away from his studies twice and “indulging in a tempest of pleasure in London” he changed his name to Silas Tomkyn Cumberbatch and became a horse-soldier with the Dragoons. (He always hated his first name, Samuel, and frequently used pseudonyms in his writing. His pen names included Gnome, Zagri, and Nehemiah Higginbottom). His military career lasted some four months before he was bought-out by his family and returned to Cambridge. Picnic among pixies Before he married Sarah Fricker (1740-1845) and in search of a love - or at least romance - in his life he came back from Cambridge to Ottery, first stop the family home and his mother but then, two days later, he headed back to his beloved river Otter and one of his childhood’s secret places. This was the so-called Pixies’ Parlour and this his chosen spot for a rather special picnic he hosted. St. Mary's Chruch, viewed from the Otter Valley's East Hill. PHOTO: Mike Bird It is a place that survives to this day - more or less - and inspired one of his poems Songs of the Pixies - causing Lord Byron to taunt him by writing that, “He has a pixie for a muse!” This is the poem’s introduction: Initials carved by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1789 on the rock at Pixies' Parlour “The Pixies, in the superstition of Devonshire, are a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. At a small distance from a village in that county, half-way up a woodcovered hill, is an excavation called the Pixies’ Parlour. The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable cyphers, among which the author discovered his own cypher and those of his brothers, cut by the hand of their childhood. At the foot of the hill flows the river Otter. To this place the Author, during the summer months of the year 1793, conducted a party of young ladies; one of whom, of stature elegantly small, and of complexion colourless yet clear, was proclaimed the Faery Queen”. That young lady’s name was Elizabeth Boutflower, who, whilst doubtless delighted with the attention was evidently not sufficiently impressed by STC’s rhyming couplets and married elsewhere some short while after. What then of that epic Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the wondrous Kubla Kahn and the rest? All of these came later and together with the fuller story of his extraordinary life beyond the confines of the beautiful Otter Valley are well documented elsewhere whilst this is solely about his formative years in his beloved Devon. After his death in Highgate, London on Friday, 25 July 1834 at the age of just 52, it was said of him that “As a poet, his place is indisputable: it is high among the highest of all time”. A poet's pilgrimage But the greatest tribute by one great poet to another must surely be the pilgrimage that William Wordsworth made to Ottery St. Mary some 13 years after his great friend’s death. “On coming into the church one afternoon towards the end of May, 1841, he had noticed a tall, elderly gentleman. Thinking that he was an interested visitor, he approached him and was surprised to find he was the celebrated poet William Wordsworth. He gave him a warm welcome and invited him to tea with his family at the Manor House”. Wordsworth had travelled from the Lake District to make farewell visits to his old haunts in the Quantocks after an absence of over 40 years and had decided to include this, the birthplace of his old friend at the culmination of his journey to the West Country. The memorial How appropriate therefore that the very place where a friendless little boy once ‘moped and played and dreamed’, the self-same place that Wordsworth came to pay tribute to friendship and genius is to become the site of a memorial statue to Devon’s own, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. JOHN FISHER 84 Countryside, History, Walks, the Arts, Events & all things Devon at: DEVONSHIRE magazine.co.uk
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DEVONSHIRE Devon’s Countryside, W
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Whittaker Commercial New Build Refu
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DEVONSHIRE www.devonshiremagazine.c
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44 29 30 20 46 54 82 DEVONSHIR
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Letterbox YOUR NEWS TO THE EDITOR -
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will that happen this year? If so,
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What's On: Tel. (01395) Oct to Dec
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What's On: Oct to Dec 17 LOCAL FEE
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COVERING EVERY ADDRESS by ROYAL MAI
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Devonshire Oct to Dec 17

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